Egyptian Government Orders ISPs to Switch Off
The Egyptian government made headlines this week for blocking certain social networking sites. Now it appears as though the country is attempting to switch off the internet altogether.
Earlier this week, in an effort to crack down on protests, Egypt cut off access to Twitter, Facebook and, at one point, Google. Now, it seems the country has decided to completely ‘switch off’ the Internet by asking services providers to shut down all international connections to the Web.
Renesys reports that though critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now, Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are off the air.
“At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet's global routing table,” writes James Cowie.
“Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers,” he continued, adding, “Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.”
The only company with a working connection is Noor Group. Renesys says it still has 83 out of 83 live routes to its Egyptian customers, and notes that the Egyption Stock Exchange is at a Noor address.
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Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
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Ragnar-Kon Who knew the new-world version of tear gas would be switching off ISPs...Reply
Judging by whats on the news, I doubt this will stop protests. If anything it'll make them stronger, just maybe a little less organized. -
zachary k yea, that will stop it. or instead more people will be angry and more people will protest and riot, only this time is will be EVERYWHERE instead of organized in one place.Reply -
joytech22 That would suck big time, especially for anyone who games online or owns steam games/games that require always-on internet.Reply -
dogman_1234 The Egyptian people have had enough. This will surely add some nitro to the protesting.Reply -
alidan joytech22That would suck big time, especially for anyone who games online or owns steam games/games that require always-on internet.i could see killing people a viable option for me if this happend to me.Reply -
sparky2010 One thing i keep thinking of is from the original (and to me, the only) Matrix, when Morpheus is captured and is being interrogated, Agent Smith tells him that humans are a plague, a cancer to the planet earth.... so yeah, we're a cancer, and we've multiplied and screwed our planet almost to breaking point.. and now that we're running out of food, natural resources, heating up the atmosphere, and now with the recent global crisis adding to the extremely large global unemployment and the large amount of poor people/countries, well, basically what i'm trying to say is,Reply
the world's going to hell! :D